“Syme was not only dead, he was abolished, an unperson.”

For the last time: there will be no health care bill passed

The lede on this NYT article begins “In a surprise setback for Democratic leaders,” and then goes on to describe how Joe Lieberman has said he will not vote for the health care bill, even in its current form: a watered-down compromise of a compromise of a compromise. And all I can think is, which idiots are surprised by this? I have been saying for months that there will be no health care bill passed by Obama, not now or ever. Stendhal, commenters on this blog, and smart people like Ezra Klein have all insisted that I was wrong this whole time. I thought, perhaps I was. But the bottom line is that the perversion of Senate rules require 60 votes for everything, and there are simply not 60 senators who support health care reform in any form whatsoever. There are 58, max. What am I missing?

4 Responses

And let’s not forgot *why* this is possible. The Democrats welcomed him back to the party, they’ve refused to take away his seniority positions and chairmanships of senate committees, and they have ruled out reconciliation as a means to bypass his obstruction. In other words, Lieberman holds 100% of the leverage and Harry Reid has none.

I was still optimistic that healthcare reform with some watered down version of a public option would pass until I started seeing shit like this today. I thought that Lieberman and Snowe and Collins would at least have to pretend to be trying for their constituents, who probably realize that but Lieberman is obviously not being subtle about it. Now I’m just depressed about it. Nothing they pass at this point is gonna do much to relieve my frustrations with healthcare as it exists today.

Right. The White House seems to think that Lieberman is acting in good faith, and that if only they appease him a little more, he’ll support health care reform. I think they’re being idiots. But even if I am wrong, and King Joe holds the bill hostage enough to get everything he wants and then finally supports it, what will it actually accomplish?

The goal was never for Obama to “win,” it was to get actual, progressive health care reform that increased coverage and decreased cost. We won’t get a progressive or even center-left bill, but a Lieberman bill, which means it will be conservative, and would ensure that the insurance companies headquartered in CT that funnel millions of dollars to Lieberman will reap extraordinary profits.

Obama will give a grandiloquent speech about his achievement, while people still won’t be able to afford health care and the costs to our nation will rise. Lieberman wins, the insurance companies win, and everyone else loses. Go America.